---
title: ‘What a fuss over a poor little worm!’ said the big sister scornfully. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What a fuss over a poor little worm!’ said the big sister scornfully. Who acts: fuss. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 99

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‘What a fuss over a poor little worm!’ said the big sister scornfully.

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**Who acts:** fuss · **What happens:** say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fuss), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3454:24:99
# text = ‘What a fuss over a poor little worm!’ said the big sister scornfully.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	4	det	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	fuss	fuss	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
5	over	over	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	worm	worm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	sister	sister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
16	scornfully	scornfully	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | what fuss over a poor little worm |  |  |  |  | scornfully *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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